The oil and gas industry expends sizable sums to design cutting tools, such as downhole drill bits including roller cone rock bits and fixed-cutter bits. Such drill bits may have relatively long service lives with relatively infrequent failure. In particular, considerable sums are expended to design and manufacture roller cone rock bits and fixed-cutter bits in a manner that minimizes the opportunity for catastrophic drill bit failure during drilling operations. The loss of a roller cone or a polycrystalline diamond compact from a fixed-cutter bit during drilling operations can impede the drilling operations and, at worst, necessitate rather expensive fishing operations.
Diagnostic information (e.g., temperature) related to a drill bit and certain components of the drill bit may be linked to the durability, performance, and the potential failure of the drill bit. For example, thermal measurements of a cutting element has been obtained, at least in a laboratory environment, through the use of one or more embedded thermocouples within the cutting element. The embedded thermocouples may be relatively large and may require careful implementation and placement of partially drilled holes through the substrate and into the diamond table adjacent the cutting surface of a cutting element. The drilled portions through the substrate and diamond table for housing the thermocouples may compromise the mechanical strength of the cutting element. Thermocouples may also require the use of relatively large voltage drivers, which may limit the downhole usefulness in obtaining accurate and representative temperature measurements during actual rock cutting during a subterranean drilling operation or, at the least, in a drilling simulator. As a result of these and other issues, conventional thermal measurements have been limited to laboratory experiments rather than obtaining real-time performance data during rock cutting.